NCDC Releases 2011 Annual Accomplishments Report

Submitted by susan.osborne on Mon, 08/27/2012 - 7:40am

August 27, 2012, NCDC released its 2011 Annual Accomplishments Report, which highlights the Center’s key accomplishments throughout the year. The report illustrates how NCDC continues to carry out critical climate science, develop new and better applications to enable climate data access, and monitor our changing planet.

NCDC has proved to be the trusted authority on weather and climate information that the Nation needs. The Center remains the world’s largest archive of climate information, with a digital archive containing 6,500 terabytes in 2011—6,500 terabytes equates to one Kindle book for each of the 7.1 billion people on Earth. NCDC also delivered over 1,000 terabytes of data electronically to users throughout the year.

In 2011, NCDC released the once-a-decade update to the Climate Normals as well as a new version of the Global Historical Climatology Network-Monthly dataset. NCDC also released five new satellite-based operational Climate Data Records, which provide objective climate information from weather satellite data that NOAA has collected for more than 30 years.

As the importance of climate information to make decisions grows in areas such as agriculture, energy, and city planning, NCDC continues to increase its suite of climate services for the Nation. NCDC’s world-class team dedicates itself to deciphering the state of our climate for the Nation and to preserving climate information for generations to come.